Tuesday, December 30, 2008

NIST may have deliberately lied about the collapse of Building 7 --said to have been 'pulled' even by Larry Silverstein, its owner. The NIST, charged with investigating the building's collapse, is still trying to peddle the absurd ex post facto rationalization that 'heat expansion' is responsible for the perfectly symmetrical collapse of a building that had never been struck by aircraft.

Lies about crimes are crimes. 911 was a crime. Lies about 911 are obstructions of justice. NIST lied about 911 and now, a group urging a real investigation of 911, is suing to charge NIST with obstruction of justice.

In case after case, scandal after scandal, American federal law enforcement officials have clearly shown by their indictments and prosecutions that there is no confusion in their minds—lying is a crime. Businesspersons need to clearly understand those rules and what prosecutors define as lying.

In recent corporate scandals, some executives have learned the hard way that lying is still a crime in corporate America. Martha Stewart was accused of selling her ImClone stock allegedly after receiving insider information. However, she was not convicted of securities fraud. She was instead convicted for lying. In addition, Computer Associates executives were indicted and some have already pleaded guilty for lying to their own company’s attorney during an internal investigation when their lies were passed on by their attorney to the government.

911 liars held to a lesser standard, a parallel system of justice in which the laws that apply to everyone else are ignored or winked at whether the 'persons of interest' happen to be proponents of new and phony laws of physics or the numerous lies told by George W. Bush himself.

Recently, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002[15], which included a specific section declaring that the destruction or alteration of documents (or the inclusion of false entries in such documents) constitutes the crime of obstruction of justice, which carries a twenty-year prison sentence. Destroying documents—or otherwise concealing tangible evidence—clearly can subject anyone engaging in such conduct to criminal prosecution.

From the legislative history of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it appears that the new obstruction of justice section was intended to be broader in scope and to eliminate some of the ambiguities and technicalities that had been required for a conviction as described above.[16]

It is clear enough to anyone who has followed the time line of events. Bush --his administration, his gang of 'close supporters' --exploited the events of 911, overtly obstructed investigations, and repeatedly lied about the crimes. The result has been the disastrous and criminal regime of George W. Bush. It matters.

The official theories about 911 are all indefensible, revised often to overcome new objections as they arise. All are lies, ex post facto rationalizations to cover up the crime. Certainly --the lies themselves are crimes and it is time to bring the 911 liars to justice. Bush may defy the 'laws of this nation' but he is impotent against the 'laws of physics' and entropy. No more lies. No more bullshit. No more re-inventing the laws of physics. No more new-speak. No more double plus good.

There is no reason to suppose that anything supernatural happened at WTC 7; there is no reason to suppose that laws of physics discovered and described by William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Newton, Galileo et al were repealed.

There is reason to suspect that something highly illegal happened at WTC 7. Persistent heat patterns, observed and photographed from space are big holes in Bush's official theory which cannot explain them innocently. If 'thermal expansion' is to be implicated, the source of additional heat --a violation of fundamental physics --must be demonstrated. An ex post facto cover story, like Arlen Spector's magic bullet theory, is not it. Anyone who has ever built a fire knows that fires run down, get cooler and eventually burn out. Left alone, fires never get hotter. Likewise, steel exposed to fire will only get cooler over time. The only thing that might have saved the sorry assess of the 911 liars is an non-existent exception to the laws of entropy.

In thermodynamics, the concept of entropy is a measure of the amount of energy no longer capable of conversion into work after a transformation process has taken place. Things run down. Hot things get cooler. If the 'cool' kerosene fires were insufficient to melt steel, then the presence of melted steel must be explained in another manner. If the fires are now said to have gotten hotter, the additional energy must be explained rationally. Neither Bush nor his legion of paid 911 liars can change the laws of physics.

The best explanation for the collapse of WTC 7 is still the simplest --Silverstein's simple statement that the building had been 'pulled' following his discussion and agreement with firefighters. Silverstein's own explanation --that the building was 'pulled' --explains everything while providing sufficient probable cause to bring mass murder charges against Silverstein.

A reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. The test the court of appeals employs to determine whether probable cause existed for purposes of arrest is whether facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. U.S. v. Puerta, 982 F.2d 1297, 1300 (9th Cir. 1992). In terms of seizure of items, probable cause merely requires that the facts available to the officer warrants a "man of reasonable caution" to conclude that certain items may be contraband or stolen property or useful as evidence of a crime. U.S. v. Dunn, 946 F.2d 615, 619 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. Denied, 112 S. Ct. 401 (1992).

It is undisputed that the Fourth Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits an officer from making an arrest without probable cause. McKenzie v. Lamb, 738 F.2d 1005, 1007 (9th Cir. 1984). Probable cause exists when "the facts and circumstances within the arresting officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe that a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime." United States v. Hoyos, 892 F.2d 1387, 1392 (9th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 825 (1990) (citing United States v. Greene, 783 F.2d 1364, 1367 (9th Cir. 1986), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1185 (1986)).

When there are grounds for suspicion that a person has committed a crime or misdemeanor, and public justice and the good of the community require that the matter should be examined, there is said to be a probable cause for, making a charge against the accused, however malicious the intention of the accuser may have been. And probable cause will be presumed till the contrary appears.

In an action, then, for a malicious prosecution, the plaintiff is bound to show total absence of probable cause, whether the original proceedings were civil or criminal.

Silverstein is on video tape confirming that within minutes of his discussion with firefighters, in which it was agreed that the building be pulled. The building would not be pulled, however, until two major news outlets reported the collapse before it happened in fact. That building 7 is irrefutable. It looks like every other controlled demolition because that is precisely what it was.

'Thermal expansion' differs among various materials. The 'thermal expansion' co-efficient of steel can be looked up on the internet for free! If you are willing to pay a small yearly subscription fee, you can plug that coefficient (for steel) into an 'online' calculator that will tell you precisely how much 'expansion' can be expected per degree of heat in various scales. The coefficients are one thing. Of more interest are the exponents which, as I recall, are always negative, as in negative 6. Any positive number to the power of negative six, for example, is very, very, very small. Any coefficient to a negative power is very, very, very small.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

In a 'manual' which is officially to be released only to 'students from foreign countries on a case-by-case basis only', the US Army outlines a program of what it now calls 'irregular warfare', in fact US state sponsored terrorism, insurgency, and PSYOPS.

1-21. Waging protracted IW depends on building global capability and capacity. IW will not be won by the United States alone but rather through combined efforts with multinational partners. Combined IW [Irregular Warfare, euphemism for TERRORISM] will require the joint force to establish a long-term sustained presence in numerous countries to build partner capability and capacity. This capability and capacity extends U.S. operational reach, multiplies forces available, and provides increased options for defeating adversaries. The constituent activities of IW are:

Ignoring 1) the mountainous body of evidence that US policy and the CIA, specifically, is the root-cause of the vast majority of the what is commonly called 'world terrorism'; and 2) the equally impressive body of hard evidence that 911 was an inside job, the Army cites 911 as the pretext by which the US should embark above the policy as outlined above.[See: Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes ]

1-18. The 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States highlighted the increased danger of warfare conducted by other-than-state enemies. Recognizing that such irregular threats by nonstate actors would be a likely and even dominant pattern throughout the 21st century, national policy makers dictated that planners must analyze and prepare for such irregular threats. It was clear that previous assumptions about the terms “conventional,” “traditional,” or “regular” warfare, and reliance solely on a “regular” or “conventional warfare” doctrine were inadequate. IW was a significant theme in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report. In April 2006, the Pentagon drafted the execution roadmap for IW as a means of combating this growing threat from actions beyond conventional state-to-state military conflict.

Elsewhere, the document cites the threat posed to the US by "WMD—such as nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. But I have yet to find a single word, phrase, sentence or paragraph in which the manual mentioned the threat posed the rest of the world by some forty years or more of US meddling, threats, covert operations, US sponsored assassinations, and overt threats of bombing and/or war and invasion. Instead, we get platitudes that are made absolutely meaningless by the remainder of this arrogant, imperialistic document.

A-64. Democracy and the protection of fundamental liberties were the basis for the creation of the United States more than 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been to promote respect for democracy and human rights throughout the world. The DOS— .. Promotes democracy as a way to achieve security, stability, and prosperity for the entire world. .. Helps establish and assist newly formed democracies.

During the 40s and 50s, most of the public was unaware of what the CIA was doing. Those who knew thought they were fighting the good fight against communism, like James Bond. However, they could not keep their actions secret forever, and by the 60s and 70s, Americans began learning about the agency’s crimes and atrocities. (3) It turns out the CIA has:

Corrupted democratic elections in Greece, Italy and dozens of other nations;

Been involved to varying degrees in at least 35 assassination plots against foreign heads of state or prominent political leaders. Successful assassinations include democratically elected leaders like Salvador Allende (Chile) and Patrice Lumumba (Belgian Congo); also CIA-created dictators like Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic) and Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam); and popular political leaders like Che Guevara. Unsuccessful attempts range from Fidel Castro to Charles De Gaulle.

Helped run the "School of the Americas" at Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin American military officers how to overthrow democratic governments. Subjects include the use of torture, interrogation and murder;

Used Michigan State "professors" to train Diem’s secret police in torture;

Paved the way for the massacre of 200,000 in East Timor, 500,000 in Indonesia and one to two million in Cambodia;

Launched secret or illegal military actions or wars in Nicaragua, Angola, Cuba, Laos and Indochina;

Planted false stories in the local media;

Framed political opponents for crimes, atrocities, political statements and embarrassments that they did not commit;

Spied on thousands of American citizens, in defiance of Congressional law;

Smuggled Nazi war criminals and weapon scientists into the U.S., unpunished, for their use in the Cold War;

Created organizations like the World Anti-Communist League, which became filled with ex-Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, Italian terrorists, Japanese fascists, racist Afrikaaners, Latin American death squad leaders, CIA agents and other extreme right-wing militants;

Conducted Operation MK-ULTRA, a mind-control experiment that gave LSD and other drugs to Americans against their will or without their knowledge, causing some to commit suicide;

Penetrated and disrupted student antiwar organizations;

Kept friendly and extensive working relations with the Mafia;

Actively traded in drugs around the world since the 1950s to fund its operations. The Contra/crack scandal is only the tip of the iceberg –- other notorious examples include Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle and Noreiga’s Panama.

Had their fingerprints all over the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X. Even if the CIA is not responsible for these killings, the sheer amount of CIA involvement in these cases demands answers; [editor's note, see: Evidence That the CIA Murdered RFK]

And then routinely lied to Congress about all of the above.

The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (4) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."

The US Army document, cited above, is an arrogant, imperialistic and ill-considered response to a growing 'threat' --but a threat that is posed only to US monopolists and death merchants, i.e., the Military/Industrial Complex, a fancy name for Murder, Inc. The US has, in fact, squandered the limitless goodwill that had been extended our nation at the end of World War II.

The US has failed to make positive use of the world support for allied efforts to codify war crimes, to hold Nazi War Criminals responsibility for heinous crimes. But now --we have a recent US military document that the US Army would prefer to keep secret no doubt because it reveals to the world that those principles espoused at Nuremberg are either no longer operative or they were a fraud, the US didn't really mean it. Or perhaps they forgot to tell the world that the laws applied to everyone but themselves.

The Army has now revealed to the world that no nation is safe from US terrorism, US attack, US subversion of indigenous cultures and governments, US bullying or the US use of WMD against them. That is because the US believes itself to be a world-wide empire, in fact, a single nation that presumes to rule the world.

The well-informed countries --western Europe --know perfectly well what our game is. General de Gaulle took France out of NATO because he suspected that we were in the empire--building business, and he didn't want to go along with it yet, simultaneously, France remained an ally in case there was a major war with the Soviets. I don't think we should take too seriously those eastern European countries. In due course, they will wake up, as Turkey did, that we are dangerous.

I have repeatedly stated that the US regime of George W. Bush was not legitimate. How can I make it any clearer? "Illegitimate" means that the regime of George W. Bush was no more legitimate than the crooked regimes of tin horn dictators in banana republics. The Bush regime differed little in terms of competence or statesmanship. Now, in a cynical document that the US Army had never intended be disseminated publicly, we have confirmation that the position of the US vis a vis the rest of the world is based not upon Democracy or legitimacy. It is, rather based entirely upon force, aggression and US terrorism.

Addendum:

Is the United States going to put dictatorship into effect under the guise of the anti-terrorist struggle? What may trigger another major transformation in 2009? The answer is obvious: another 9/11 in the USA.

Terrible and bloody events are in store for the world in the beginning of 2009. Most likely, the world will witness a reality show with a nuclear blast, which will be used as a reason for the US administration to change the world order again and leave the new Great Depression behind. There is every reason to believe that the Russian Federation may suffer as a result of this possible initiative too.

Joe Biden made a sensational statement on October 19, 2008. He said that Barack Obama would have to undergo an ordeal during the first six months of his stay in the White House. It will be the time of a very serious international crisis, when Obama would have to make tough and possibly unpopular decisions both in home and foreign politics.

Biden said that there were four or five scenarios for the development of the international crisis. Afghanistan, North Korea or the Russian Federation may become the source of one of them.

When Obama learned of Biden’s speech, he tried to explain everything with rhetorical exaggerations. However, Biden’s remarks gave food for thought, taking into consideration the fact that former secretary of state Madeleine Albright described his remarks as statement of fact.

But we already knew the US under sociopathic Bush is a terrorist nation..Bush,Rumsfeld,Rice,Hannity,Limbaugh,Cheney,Bolton,et al are all implicators in this world terrorism by threatening Iraq and Iran.It is certainly a terror to the Iraqui/Iranian people by the US.

My response is that it will be argued in 'defense' of the GOP that Bush, Rice et al were just an 'aberration'. But the SIGNIFICANCE of the Army document is that they were NOT an aberration. It's the MIC S.O.P.

As I have said numerous times: the Bush administration is illegitimate. Secondly, the MIC is a polite euphemism for a Murder Inc on an international, industrial scale. Death and destruction are the US's chief exports. Our currency is all but worthless and, like Rome when it invaded Dacia for its gold, the US invades other nations for its resources, primarily oil. At last, The US resembles Rome in that Rome subverted 'fair wages' with 'slavery', in effect, putting working people out of work for good! It became a permanent 'underclass'. The US has accomplished the same thing by enriching ONLY the uppper one percent of the population --a disparity of both wealth and income that clearly parallels that of Rome in its last throes.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Did Bush's guru Karl Rove order the Murder of Mike Connell because he knew too much? Attorneys for Mike Connell, recently killed in a suspicious 'plane crash', had sought protection for Connell and his family. Connell was being threatened by Karl Rove, the Republican guru, arguably the 'brains' behind Bush's rise to near absolute power in the White House. If Rove's threats in response to Connell's imminent revelations are not probable cause to arrest Rove immediately, it ought to be. In any case, Rove should be targeted by an exhaustive and relentless investigation of this crime of obvious murder. Connell, who was on John McCain's payroll, had also been 'warned' that his craft had been tampered with.

Connell was killed December 19th when the Piper Lance Saratoga he piloted crashed short of the Akron-Canton Airport runway. Sabotage was suspected immediately. Connell was the GOP IT guru who may have rigged Bush's victories in 2000 and, again, in 2004. Certainly, Karl Rove as well as the GOP leadership and George W. Bush have motive. Connell was the man who knew how the GOP steals elections. Connell was the man who knew too much.

The fact that Connell was reportedly planning to 'tell all', perhaps implicating the White House, is motive enough for murder.

On October 31, Mr. Connell appeared before a federal judge in Ohio after being subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit investigating the rigging of the 2004 election under the direction of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Connell to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3rd, the day before the presidential election. Velvet Revolution received confidential information that the White House was extremely concerned about Mr. Connell talking about his illegal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attorneys were dispatched to represent him.

An associate of Mr. Connell's told VR that Mr. Connell was involved with the destruction of the White House emails and the setting up of the off-grid White House email system.

Mr. Connell handled all of John McCain's computer work in the recent presidential campaign. VR has received direct evidence that the McCain campaign kept abreast of the legal developments against Mr. Connell by reading the VR dedicated website, www.rovecybergate.com.

VR demands that the Ohio Attorney General and the United States Justice Department conduct a complete investigation into the activities of Mr. Connell and determine whether there was any foul play in his death. VR demands that federal law enforcement officials place the following people under protective custody pending this investigation.

This case stinks! If it is not fully investigated, there should be hell to pay. Rove's threats, the stolen elections, Rove's extremely close ties to George W. Bush, himself a war criminal and mass murderer, are just a few factors that literally scream: investigate! If a fair and thorough investigation implicates George W. Bush and numerous others in the GOP leadership --so be it! It's time to dispose of the garbage and hose down the stench that will be left in the White House.

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

On October 31, Mr. Connell appeared before a federal judge in Ohio after being subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit investigating the rigging of the 2004 election under the direction of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Connell to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3rd, the day before the presidential election. Velvet Revolution received confidential information that the White House was extremely concerned about Mr. Connell talking about his illegal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attorneys were dispatched to represent him.

An associate of Mr. Connell’s told VR that Mr. Connell was involved with the destruction of the White House emails and the setting up of the off-grid White House email system.

Mr. Connell handled all of John McCain’s computer work in the recent presidential campaign. VR has received direct evidence that the McCain campaign kept abreast of the legal developments against Mr. Connell by reading the VR dedicated website, www.rovecybergate.com.

VR demands that the Ohio Attorney General and the United States Justice Department conduct a complete investigation into the activities of Mr. Connell and determine whether there was any foul play in his death. VR demands that federal law enforcement officials place the following people under protective custody pending this investigation. Heather Connell who is the owner of GovTech Solutions, Randy Cole, the former President of GovTech Solutions, and Jeff Averbeck, the CEO of SmartTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Both GovTech and SmartTech have been implicated in the rigging of the 2000 and 2004 elections and the White House email scandal. Our prior request to have Mr. Connell protected went unheeded and now he is dead.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Members of the Bush administration and George W. Bush personally conspired to violate the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg Principles and US obligations to both. Bush and key members of his administration deliberately violated US criminal codes and tried to make their crimes legal after they had already committed them. Bush and his minions embarked upon this subversive action when it was made clear to them that they could be put to death for violations of US Codes which bind the US to Geneva and other treaties that were almost insisted upon by the United States.

These are not abstract principles, politics, spin or PR. These are legal principles upon which a distinguished American --Justice Robert Jackson --help codify at the Nuremberg trials of major Nazi war criminals.
It is encouraging that, of late, there is a growing chorus demanding that George W. Bush and members of his criminal regime be held to account for the crimes of aggressive war, mass murder, and torture.

Can there be a better reason for prosecuting George Bush and his administration for war crimes than those words from the chief prosecutor of the Nazis, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, with the full support of the U.S. government? Robert Jackson’s words and the values this nation claims to stand for provide sufficient moral basis for putting Bush and Cheney, their underlings who implemented their policies and the perverted legal minds who justified them all in the dock. If those are not sufficient reasons, there is a long list of binding law and treaties – written in black and white in surprisingly plain English.
Bush imagined, and his attorneys advised, that he could simply wave aside these laws with “they don’t apply.” Imagine how a judge would treat even a simple traffic court defendant who brazenly stated the law was only a quaint notion, just “words on paper?”

...there is one group of people that has always taken the war crimes charges seriously--the members of the Bush administration themselves. They have good reason for doing so, because they have exposed hundreds of Americans to possible prosecution for violating US law. As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes.

Unless Bush plans to make his escape to Paraguay while still 'President', his exit from the Oval Office will make him vulnerable to process for violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by both houses of Congress without dissent. The act covers every crime that may be charged to Bush as of this moment and as of the time Bush will exit the 'cover' of the Oval Office.

The act deals specifically with his deliberate "killing, torture or inhumane treatment" of 'detainees' at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and the gulag archipelago of 'detention centers' throughout Eastern Europe. Violations of the War Crimes Act that result in the death of a detainee carry the death penalty and there is no statute of limitations.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

Bush had been planning to commit capital crimes long before 911 and, in fact, tried to make 'legal' the crimes that he had intended to commit.

Wishing to rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein, in 1996 a Republican-dominated Congress passed the War Crimes Act without a dissenting vote. It defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. It thereby advanced a global trend of mutual reinforcement between national and international law.
The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the United States captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

It was because Bush knew he was guilty that he tried to ram through Congress amendments to the War Crimes Act that would exonerate him EX POST FACTO. Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional. Bush defenders will waste their time trying to convince me that ex post facto prohibition applies only to those laws making one prosecutable for acts that were legal at the time of commission. In other words, if it was legal to spit on the sidewalk at the time you did so, you are immune to prosecution under any law passed after you had so spit!

Clearly --Bush can not commit murder now and expect to escape prosecution by making it legal after the fact. That is nothing less than rule by decree and is utterly inconsistent with the very concepts of 'rule of law' or 'due process of law'. Don't confuse this with amnesty, which, to my knowledge, Bush has not sought nor does he deserve. Rather, Bush has tried to rewrite both laws and history. He tried to make legal those capital crimes that he had already committed, a tyrannical notion that is absurd on its face.

Several yeas ago, I wrote an article that pointed out that any federal grand jury could indict Bush for capital crimes and, in fact, could begin an investigation of Bush upon its own volition. Any federal judge can, upon his/her own motion, convene a federal grand jury to consider any case deemed worthy of investigation. I would suggest that any Federal Judge reading this, get off your bench and convene a jury! It is your patriotic duty to this nation and its laws!

Former LA Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi makes another case, that because Bush deliberately lied in order to send US soldiers to their deaths in an illegal war, Bush is prosecutable for murder.

In the first sentence, we're told:

The book you are about to read deals with what I believe to be the most serious crime ever committed in American history - - the president of the nation, George W. Bush, knowingly and deliberately taking this country to war in Iraq under false presences, a war that condemned over 100,000 human beings, including 4,000 American soldiers, to horrific, violent deaths." (V. Bugliosi, p. 3)

The president "knowingly and deliberately" caused the deaths of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians and that's called murder, plain and simple. This is not a hypothetical case that could happen under special legal interpretations. When the president leaves office, he is subject to the same law as the rest of us. Bugliosi explains the ability to prosecute the case against George W. Bush by a district attorney or states attorney in any local jurisdiction where a life was lost in the Iraq war. Federal prosecutors also have that option. Bugliosi's detailed analysis of this phenomenon offers some of the best analysis in the book and the detailed end notes.

Because he has notoriety, Bugliosi has succeeded in attracting some attention to this issue. My fear is that in the post-election atmosphere of relief that Obama turned back the GOP wave the pressure to bring George W. Bush to justice will subside. That would be a grave mistake, a catastrophic precedent. If Bush is allowed to make good a get away, the signal will have been sent that US presidents are above the law and may perpetrate mass murder and war crimes at will.

Violations of US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 are NOT to be confused with violations of international treaties which may have the effect of putting Bush in the dock at the Hague. Certainly, Bush had planned to commit acts that were known to be violations of US laws and our treaty commitments. Even before 911 provided Bush the pretext to attack and invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, Tom DeLay sponsored legislation that provided for a US military invasion of The Hague in those instances should Bush find himself in the dock for war crimes. The timing of the bill is material to the case against Bush and speaks to the fact that Bush had been planning to wage war and wished to immunize himself against prosecution for the acts that were known at the time to be violations of international laws to which the US was bound by treaty.

I know of no reason why Bush should be impeached before he is indicted. Impeachment is a political remedy, the purview of Congress. What is discussed here are specific acts that are against the law. Bush should fear the very real possibility of being hauled before a federal judge charged with capital crimes.

There are yet other legal ghosts that will haunt Bush. He may be charged with perpetrating the crime of genocide.

U.S. Code; Chapter 50A; Section § 1091. Genocide
(a) Basic Offense. - Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of war, in a circumstance described in subsection (d) and with the specific
intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.

(1) kills members of that group;

(2) causes serious bodily injury to members of that group;

(3) causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques;

(4) subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part;

(5) imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or

(6) transfers by force children of the group to another group; or attempts to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b0.

As this blog has pointed out for years, the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg apply as well to Bush and those key members of his cabinet with whom he conspired.

At Nuremberg, the foremost crime identified was starting a “war of aggression,” later codified by U.N. Resolution 3314, Art. 5, as “a crime against international peace.” Launching a war of aggression, as Hitler did against Poland, is considered so monstrous that the nation responsible can then be charged with “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” spelled out in detail in the Geneva Conventions. As Tom Paine said long before the U.N. formalized the definition of aggression, “He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of Hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”
A small sampling of the contagion of Hell let loose by Bush includes illegally invading a sovereign state, using banned weapons such as white phosphorous and napalm, bombing hospitals and civilian infrastructure, withholding aid and medical supplies, terrorizing and knowingly killing civilians, torturing prisoners, killing a million people and displacing four million more.

Following World War II, humanity resolved that wars do more than spark a series of loathsome, individual crimes. Leaders responsible for a war actually commit crimes against the entirety of humanity. They inflict harm on every human being, something that must be put right before humanity can be restored.

There is a final reason why we must prosecute Bush and Co. It is not what some argue, although they point to a serious danger: that Bush trashed the law and usurped powers, encouraging future presidents to expand where he left off. Such reasons are about George Bush and those who hold the office after him, but in the final analysis this is about us.
We are complicit in the horrors of this administration.

We can claim neither ignorance nor innocence. We are complicit by the very fact that we are citizens of the United States, more so because we paid for the war, and even more so for this reason. Listen to a village sheik I met in Iraq describe it better than I ever could.

A Congress which did not have the stomach for impeachment shirked it's duty. Impeachment might have saved this nation the nightmare that it has not yet survived. The Congressional leadership of both parties have much to answer for.

I would hope that a hard nosed federal judge will consider the crimes holistically, in accordance with the conspiracy laws that are currently on the books. America's leaders betrayed the people in order to conduct war crimes for which Nazis were hanged! How we do justify to the world a double standard that says, in effect, if Nazis do it, we hang them! But if Americans perpetrate precisely the same crimes for the same purposes, we let them retire and bequeath a library!

I would urge that a federal grand jury be convened immediately to consider upon the probable cause and the evidence whether or not George W. Bush is guilty of capital crimes and whether or not he should be put to death!
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Sometime in the early Fifties someone wrote, 'assassination became an instrument of U.S. national policy.' More recently, the 'weapon' of choice is the small aircraft. The most recent assassination by plane may turn out to be that of Michael Connell, the Bush IT guru who may have helped the GOP rig Bush's 'elections' of 2000 and 2004. He was a man who knew too much. That's always been sufficient to get you murdered.

Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how to tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that the George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell's life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR's attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell's not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

On October 31, Mr. Connell appeared before a federal judge in Ohio after being subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit investigating the rigging of the 2004 election under the direction of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Connell to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3rd, the day before the presidential election. Velvet Revolution received confidential information that the White House was extremely concerned about Mr. Connell talking about his illegal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attorneys were dispatched to represent him.

Connell was a 'source' for lots of 'dirt' involving the names George W. Bush, Karl Rove, perhaps the leadership of the GOP. Motive enough to 'off' him. I think that's precisely what they did. By 'they' I mean those GOP elites, 'world leaders', politicos that he was prepared to finger. That's the way the mob works. The GOP is a mob.

You see, Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all "known" Karl Rove accounts.

In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.

My advice to anyone daring to dissent in this country is this: DON'T FLY! This is no 'conspiracy theory', it's the mathematically calculable odds. In Vegas, the 'odds' are always with the house and that is by design. No 'conspiracy theory' is required. It's the way Las Vegas stays in business. By the way, Las Vegas began as a mobster's dream. 'Bugsy' Seigel himself was 'offed' by the 'mob'. Another thing the GOP has in common with the MOB. It eats its own.

In politics, the GOP is playing the odds you won't ever figure out what they're really up to! The GOP has placed its bet that you are too stupid to figure out that the odds against so many strange deaths happening by accident are astronomical, or that the odds are always with the GOP whenever it comes to suspicious vote recounts and dubious Diebold voting machines. In Vegas, no one beats the house, no one beats the odds against him. But in the GOP mob, the GOP always beats the odds because it is the GOP which rigs the 'game'.

Here's a note to the GOP and its 'muscle' --the CIA: we have computers now. We can load up software that can figure the odds that a primordial singularity would expand into what we call the universe. Working out the stats against a string of obvious murders from which ONLY the right wing benefits doesn't really require an Einstein or a super computer. You don't have to have access to a Cray in order to smell a rat.

By the time a suspicious airplane crash claimed Sen. Paul Wellstone, it should have been clear: Sen. Paul Wellstone and innumerable other 'liberals' could not possibly be the victims of a perverse turn in the laws of probability. Only the gullible and stupid think so. Wellstone was a 60s still radical, the first to have been elected to the US Senate.

The Bush White House had 'targeted' Wellstone for defeat. Karl Rove himself had hand-picked Norm Coleman --conservative Republican --to run against Wellstone. The motive for 'death by plane crash' was the fact that despite seemingly unlimited spending by the GOP, Wellstone's lead over Coleman was increasing daily. The election was but two weeks away.

Powerful forces would do anything to sweep Wellstone out of the Senate.

Who's agenda was most threatened by Wellstone? Answer: Bush!

On the morning of 25 October 2002, Wellstone was killed after an apparent loss of communication and control that led to the crash of his small plane. He died alongside his wife Sheila, their daughter Marcia, three staff members, and the two pilots, while trying to land at Minnesota’s Eveleth-Virginia airport.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer insisted to his reporter at the scene that foul weather was the lethal factor in the crash, despite statements to the contrary from the CNN correspondent who was actually there. To this day, the public tends to blame the weather. First reports convey enduring impressions but are not always right.

Ph.D. Professors James Fetzer and Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs present the harrowing truth. The plane was not responsible. The weather didn’t cause it to crash. Nor were the pilots incompetent, as the report of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would eventually maintain.

The story that you are supposed to believe is that an 'accidental tragedy' occurred on the morning of October 25, 2002 when Sen. Wellstone lost 'communication and control' while trying to land at Minnesota’s Eveleth-Virginia airport. Also killed in the crash were his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia, three staff members, and the two pilots.

Despite statements to the contrary, CNNs Wolf Blitzer insisted that it was foul weather alone that was responsible for the crash. As to be expected in the absence of real or responsible 'reportage', the public believes the first cover story to have been rolled out, i.e, it was the fault of the weather! In fact, the crash was highly, improbably convenient to Bush Jr's legislative agenda.

The balance in the Senate for years 2002 to 2004 was 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and one independent. If both Wellstone and Carnahan had not been killed, and Wellstone had gone on as projected to win his race, the balance would have been 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and one independent. This would have significantly changed what happened in Congress and in the US, where the presidency and both houses of Congress were Republican controlled over those two years.

Isn't it quite a coincidence that these two Democratic candidates both died in plane crashes only two years apart, both just weeks before the elections? It's even more of a coincidence that both were very progressive Democrats. Wellstone was often labeled the most progressive member of Senate. As a National Review article stated, "Probably no other member of the Senate had been on the losing side of more 99-1 or 98-2 votes. None had voted more consistently against the Bush administration."

The 'Bush' reaction to Paul Wellstone's opposition in the Senate is instructive, suspicious, incriminating, shameful, abominable and --given that it is a 'Bush' reaction --completely predictable! After all, it comes from a family that has conspired to betray the nation, the Constitution and the American people.

So when Wellstone met Bush in a typical White House pro forma reception line, he used the occasion to urge Bush on three different occasions to spend more time on issues like education and cautioning him against the Persian Gulf War. Of course, Bush was more concerned about fighting the war against Iraq (sound familiar?) and could care less about Wellstone's issues. After Wellstone violated Bush 41's sanctimonious White House protocol, Bush was overheard saying, "Who is this chicken shit?"

Now after Senator Wellstone was tragically killed in a plane crash and "General" Karl Rove is obviously busy trying to figure out how the tragedy can benefit the GOP's chances of winning control of the Senate, I think it's time to answer old man Bush's question. Far from being a chicken shit, Wellstone actually cared for people, unlike your pathetic son who could not even find a few minutes to attend one or two funerals of his Washington, DC area neighbors who were tragically shot and killed by a couple of snipers. No, Mr. Bush 41, Paul Wellstone was not a chicken shit, that epitaph is better reserved for you and your moronic son.

Wellstone was right! Bush did not and does not care about education! Under the back-to-back regimes of Bush/Perry, Texas won the race to bottom, beating states like Arkansas and Kansas for dead last in high school graduations. It is not merely a case of Bush not caring! It's even worse than that! As education declines, crime rates increase, ensuring that the corporate owned prisons will be full! The corporate owners of the Texas prison system are --not surprisingly --big contributors to the Texas GOP! In the wake of Bush/Perry, one is not surprised to learn that CRIME and PUNISHMENT are the last growth industries left in Texas.

Plane crashes are now obviously the preferred method of political assassination.

Even a cursory Google search will turn up hundreds, if not thousands of cases. The traitors at the CIA 'School of Assassination' find cover in absurd 'scenario' that easily fool the stupid and gullible. They also hope to find cover in the shrinking American attention span.

On April 3, 1996, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others were killed when their Air Force Boeing 737 crashed into a mountainside in Croatia. One day after the crash, before any real investigation had begun, Defense Secretary William Perry told the Associated Press that the plane crash was "a classic sort of accident that good instrumentation should be able to prevent." The Air Force soon agreed and, in its ensuing investigation, determined that the tragic event was due to navigational error. Since that time, certain anomalies and evidence have come to light regarding the crash:

Ron Brown was found with a .45-inch inwardly beveling circular hole in the top of his head, which resembled a gunshot wound. Despite this suspicious wound, the Air Force medical examiners decided not to order an autopsy.

Normally in plane crash investigations there is a two step process. The Air Force first determines whether the crash was the result of an accident, hostile fire, sabotage, or mechanical failure. In Ron Brown's case, this determination (called a safety board) was skipped. Instead, the Air Force immediately proceeded to the second part of the investigation, where only accident and legal issues are considered.

The Air Force reported that a navigation beacon had been stolen from the airport sometime before the crash. This led some to speculate that the pilot may have been intentionally drawn off course and into the mountainside by a spurious beacon.

Three days after the crash, Niko Jerkic--the man who was responsible for maintaining the airport's navigational aids--died by gunshot. This was ruled a suicide. Jerkic's untimely death meant that investigators did not have a chance to question him.

Plane crashes are very nearly the perfect vehicle of murder. The crash itself often destroys the evidence of sabotage. The public is conditioned to believe that 'plane crashes' happen. It is also true that murders happen and plane crashes may be the preferred method taught by the experts at the CIA school of assassination. Indeed, airplanes may crash all by themselves but CIA assassins preferred to rig the wheel. They prefer to bet on a sure thing. Certainly --sufficient expertise can ensure that airplanes may explode and/or crash due on cue.

There are some indications that Americas are, at last, awakening to the harsh and grim reality: agencies of the US government are either tasked or have taken it upon themselves a program of political assassination the objectives of which are:

The US became a 'banana republic' on November 22, 1963. According to a 2001 Gallup poll, 81 percent of the American public does not believe the Warren Commission's cover story that 'a lone nut' --Lee Harvey Oswald --was the lone gunmen in Dealy Plaza that day. Of that 81 percent, many believe what Oswald himself told reporters: "I am a patsy"! They believe that he was set up to 'take the fall'. There is evidence --some of it incontrovertible --of right wing planning and involvement by elements of the CIA.

A few years ago, a British forensic scientist stated that at least two gunmen were certainly involved in the JFK assassination. In a peer-reviewed paper in the British Forensic Science Society's journal, "Science and Justice, scientist D.B.Thomas added much weight to the so-called 'grassy knoll theory' that a 'second gunman' fired at JFK. The Zapruder film supports that conclusion; it is, in fact, proof that the fatal shot was fired from the 'grassy knoll'.

There is common-sense support as well as forensic evidence:

A 'grassy knoll' shooter was about one third the distance to his target at the time the 'fatal shot' was fired!

A 'grassy knoll' shooter had a completely unobstructed view; A sixth story shooter would have been obstructed at the time the fatal shot was fired by a large tree that was fully 'leaved' as photographs taken that very day prove![check the B and W photo posted. All the cars depicted are outside the shooters extremely limited 'window of opportunity'. The tree poorly depicted. It obstructs any shots a sixth floor shooter might have had.]

A 'grassy knoll' shooter had a target whose lateral motion relative to his own position was minimized, perhaps to zero, at the time of the shot.

A 'grassy knoll' shooter had 'secure' and, as we now know, unobserved egress. A sixth floor shooter would have had to run down six flights of stairs. A 'grassy knoll' shooter, by contrast and, in fact, just broke down his .222, returned it to a briefcase and walked away!

At last --the Zapruder film indicates without any doubt whatsoever that the 'fatal shot' struck JFK was the front. The 'flack' with regard to the 'magic bullet' is a lie, invented full cloth by Republican Arlen Specter. It is not only impossible, it is completely irrelevant, a red herring. It was not the 'fatal' shot! It was said to have defied the laws of physics --yet it failed to inflict a single, mortal wound. The 'magic bullet' can be seen at JFK Lancer. It remains pristine and completely undamaged by its having shattered flesh and bone in two human beings.

Whoever fired the fatal shot should have been prosecuted for first degree murder. Had it gone to trial, this shooter, a 'man' with connections to both mob and CIA, might have fingered the mastermind, the man who co-ordinated the whole thing for the CIA. That 'co-ordinator' was photographed 'hanging around' the front entrance to the school book depository building just prior to the arrival of the JFK motorcade. Later, that man would ask this of Paul Wellstone: 'who is this chicken shit?'

It is amazing that the 'cover story' and cover up was so ham-fisted, so utterly incompetent. The murder itself was a simple matter of placing 'hired guns' in positions giving them a clear shot at the JFK motorcade which was re-routed to go down Elm toward the underpass. One of the 'hired guns' did his job, firing but one shot, in fact, the fatal shot that came from the front. That is the only scenario that is supported, indeed, proven by the single most important piece of evidence ever recovered in the case: the Zapruder film.

Always skeptical, I became convinced that the FBI, itself, was involved. What cinched it was my interview with a witness to this historic murder --the so-called 'Girl in the Red Dress' --Rosemary Willis. Her father took numerous photos that day, though none are as famous as that short sequence by Zapruder.

She had grown up by the time I met her. She was concerned about how best to archive a large collection of aging, fading slides that her father had taken many years ago. I placed the slides on a "light-table" to assess their density --I was stunned! The photos literally placed me in Dealy Plaza, right on the edge of Downtown Dallas --a location that I know very, very well.

I looked up at her with what must have been a dumb struck expression.

Rosemary Willis can be seen clearly in the famous Zapruder film. She is running merrily along the south side of Elm Street and --for some reason --pulls up short and looks back, presumably at her father whose vantage point was on the south-side of Elm Street looking north and -- as the motorcade neared the overpass --the northwest. There, in the pictures, was the motorcade in front of the School Book Depository building; here was the President's limousine with the north pergola and the famous grassy knoll behind it; then there was the First Lady climbing out onto the trunk. The individual frames were large and sharp compared to the tiny 8mm frames of the Zapruder film.

Looking at Rosemary's father's pictures, I had become an eye-witness to one of the pivotal events of this century.

I lingered over a photograph of the President --the pergola clearly identifiable in the background. Not having a copy of the Zapruder film at my disposal for comparison at the time, I can only estimate that Phil Willis's picture may have been taken at approximately frame190of the Zapruder film. My estimate is based entirely on Phil Willis' known position as marked on accurate maps of Dealy Plaza and drawing a straight line to the Pergola on the Grassy Knoll which is clearly seen directly behind the Presidential limousine.

Now —here is the interesting part: Rosemary showed me a well-thumbed issue of Look Magazine. Look had borrowed her father's photos and published the very slide that I lingered over. I compared the slide with the published version.

"Notice anything unusual?", she asked me. Yes! In the published version, a freight train was visible behind the pergola. There was no train in the slide. Since the original slide preceded the published version, where did the train come from?

"The train was in the original slide," Rosemary explained. "After the Look story, the FBI borrowed the pictures and kept them for several years. When we got them back, the train was gone." But the original picture, the one depicting the train, had already been published. the FBI was too late to shut the story down.

Certainly --there is a railroad track which runs behind the picket fence, the Pergola, and the grassy knoll. Anyone getting out of a freight train has ready access to cover behind the picket fence. That person --or persons --would also have an unobstructed view of the Presidential limousine. If certain experts are correct and the fatal shot coincides with frames 312/313 of the Zapruder film, then anyone behind the picket fence would have been at one third Osweld's distance to the President. A shooter so placed would also have a much longer window of opportunity. A sixth floor shooter would have, at most, two or three seconds of close, unobstructed view --if that!

Anyone behind the picket fence would have had the best shot, the best chance to change history for the worst. By frames 312/313, the view from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository was obstructed by a tree. Photos taken of that very tree on the day of the murder, indicate that within minutes of the assassination, the tree was fully 'leafed'. Reenactments, even the famous CBS reenactment, leave out that fact.

Some credible persons have interpreted the Zapruder films as indicating a "hit" on both frames 313 AND 319. The difference between frames 313 and 319 is a matter of only six frames. Zapruder's home movie camera was most likely shooting twelve frames per second. At 12 frames per second, the amount of time between the two frames is only one half of a second. If that assessment is correct that means that Oswald shooting alone in the book depository would have had to shoot through a liveoak tree and not only get off two shots with a cumbersome Mannlicher-Carcano and HIT his moving target within a period of less than one second. Impossible!

Finally, due to the angle that Elm street takes from the corner with the book depository to the overpass, there is simply no unobstructed view of the motorcade route from the book depository for more than a few frames at a time. Keep in mind that a 'frame' is 1/12 of a second. Yet -- we are expected to believe that Oswald managed to get off three shots in a matter of a few seconds. One of them --we are expected to believe is the magic bullet that did the work of four or more bullets. Yet --it was found unscathed at Parkland Hospital but on the WRONG gurney!

At last, there is only one reason anyone would have felt compelled to remove a train from a slide and that is this: there was something incriminating about the presence of that 'train'. Knowing 'why' they would wish to remove the train would most certainly reveal the culprit. Clue: it was not Oswald. No one would remove a train in order to convict or protect Oswald. Oswald was never said to have either arrived or tried to depart by train. Why was the train important enough to cover up, indeed, remove?

There is no innocent explanation for attempts to alter evidence in such a blatant manner. The destruction of this evidence is, itself, a crime in any context for any reason. In this case, the FBI may have obstructed justice at the very least. If the FBIs involvement in the cold-blooded murder of JFK extends no further than this, this act alone may amount to complicity after-the-fact, aiding and abetting.

If I should ever learn the specific reason, the precise motive that the FBI might have had in tampering so overtly with evidence in the JFK murder case, I will most probably learn who it was who ordered, planned and coordinated the murder of John F. Kennedy. By their act, the FBI has limited the list of 'usual suspects' to the government itself. The FBI and CIA top the list.

Almost everyone has seen the photos of tramps arrested near the tracks. Certainly --Frank Sturgis, Jeb Magruder, and E. Howard Hunt, were among them.

His connection to the JFK assassination came about almost serendipitously, when in 1974 a researcher stumbled across a photo of three tramps standing in Dallas' Dealey Plaza. It was taken on November 22nd, 1963, the day of Kennedy's shooting, and one of the tramps looked pretty much like E. Howard. In early inquiries, official and otherwise, he always denied any involvement. In later years, he'd offer a curt "No comment." And then, earlier this year, at the age of eighty-eight, he died -- though not before writing an autobiography, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond, published last month. Not surprisingly, those things he wrote down about JFK's death and gave to his eldest son don't make an appearance in the book, at least not in any definitive way. E. Howard had apparently decided to take them to the grave. But St. John still has the memo -- "It has all this stuff in it," he says, "the chain of command, names, people, places, dates. He wrote it out to me directly, in his own handwriting, starting with the initials 'LBJ' " -- and he's decided it's time his father's last secrets finally see some light, for better or for worse.

...

But then he starts talking about what it was like growing up the eldest son of Everette Howard Hunt, and a different picture emerges. "He loved the glamorous life, cocktail parties, nightclubbing, flirting, all that," Saint says. "He was unfaithful to my mom, but she stayed with him. He was a swinger. He thought of himself as a cool dude, suave, sophisticated, intellectual. He was Mr. Smooth. A man of danger. He was perfect for the CIA. He never felt guilt about anything."

Given the involvement that these men and George Bush Sr had with Richard Nixon and the CIA, I find increasingly credible what was once told me by an acquaintance who, when he learned of my involvement in the media, represented himself as a 'former' CIA operative. He told me flatly that the Kennedy assassination was a mob hit with CIA complicity. The fatal shot, he said, came from the front. Oswald was a patsy.

If he is correct, then what are the motives? Kennedy had pledged to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces". His brother Robert, as Attorney General, had gone after the "cosa nostra". Exiled cubans, the CIA and the mafia had felt betrayed by Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs. See also my previous article: Three Reasons JFK was Murdered.

Who Killed JFK? The evidence points to a right-wing faction of the CIA with some help from its friends. In CIA lingo, friends are referred to as "assets." CIA assets, including media assets, were employed to help cover-up the crime. This CIA faction was angry at JFK for his refusal to commit to a full-scale invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and for his efforts to seek an accommodation with the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro. High-level CIA officers are implicated. They include: Richard Helms, James Angleton, David Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Theodore Shackley, William Harvey, David Morales, Edward Lansdale, and George Joannides. Typing any of these CIA officer's names into an Internet search engine, along with the words "JFK assassination," will uncover a network of conspirators.

To see evidence that Lee Oswald was framed by CIA operatives click here: The Patsy

"Sometime in the early Fifties ... assassination became an instrument of U.S. national policy. It also became an important branch of our invisible government, a sizable business, and a separate technology involving weapons and devices the ordinary taxpayer paid billions for but was never permitted to see, except perhaps in the technicolor fantasies of James Bond flicks."

--Andrew St. George, journalist for Life magazine, Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation

Saturday, December 20, 2008

George W. Bush's war of naked aggression against Iraq --a war crime --has not only bankrupted the US, it has brought the entire world to the brink of economic ruin. It is also an ignominious defeat and may one day be compared to Valens' loss to barbarians at Adrianople. One wonders: what sound is made by collapsing empires? Do they go boom or 'suck'?

As the most dominant empire since Roman times, America has helped to bring great wealth and prosperity to the world..

--Pat Robertson

Amid Robertson's 'celebration' of American empire, his death threats against Hugo Chavez or Americans daring to oppose his idiocy, Robertson forgot the rest of the story: Rome fell.

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 2

Rome fell for the same reasons the US will have lost empire and world influence. Like Rome, the US has despoiled the land, waged war upon both the small farmer and the laborer, outsourced it's industry, devalued the dollar and subverted the products of labor --the sole source of 'value' in any economy. That the US 'current account balance' --as officially recorded by the CIA --is the highest in the world proves that US is bankrupt and has been for years. It also proves that GOP economics have made the US less productive vis a vis the rest of the world.

Indeed, it is the rest of the world which keeps the US afloat. As long as the rest of the world can extend us credit, it can continue to sell to the US consumer. When the plug is pulled, China and Japan will vie for second place down the chute. Like short sellers on Wall Street, 'last man out' loses!

As Gibbon reminds us, Rome --like the United States of late --was full of 'Pat Robertson' types eager to invoke the power of 'God' on their side, eager to bring down God's wrath on those daring to dissent.

It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the colour of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake, or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 26

Gibbon is famous for attributing Rome's fall to a 'loss of civil virtue' and, elsewhere states that, under the Empire of Rome, the 'labour of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly employed in the service of the rich'. Gibbon correctly states that agriculture was for Rome, as it is for every culture today, the foundation of manufacturing.

Elsewhere, Gibbon described what we would call 'supply side economics' but fails to hold it responsible for Rome's fall.

But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic, and the skilful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive a voluntary tax from the possessors of land; and the latter are prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with whose produce they may purchase additional pleasures. This operation, the particular effects of which are felt in every society, acted with much more diffusive energy in the Roman world.

Gibbon, op cit

Thus, Gibbon avoids the issue of how the wealthy obtained wealth initially that they might employ the 'diligent mechanic and the skilful artist'. In other passages, however, Gibbon clearly traces the origins of all wealth to 'land' and the human 'labor' expended making it fruitful. This is consistent with the 'Labor Theory of Value', espoused by almost every major economist from the conservative Adam Smith to the 'left leaning' Karl Marx. Rome's fall, therefore, may be traced to the rise of 'supply-side economics' or, as it is often called, 'trickle down theory'.

Rome fell because it became economically impossible. Wars of conquest ravaged the class of 'freeborn farmers' whose lands were seized whilst they were away at war. Slaves brought back to Rome permanently depressed, perhaps destroyed, the job market.

Eventually, the free-born farmer was forced by policy and circumstance to compete with slaves for jobs. Rome had forgotten or never knew the source of wealth itself: labor! It is among the many 'evils' of slavery that in addition to being cruel, it subverts the very value of labor and deprives society of it.

A slave was but a machine in which the 'elite' had made an investment. The elite landowners literally worked their slaves to death and replaced them with 'new models'. A 'slave', however, is an economic dead end.

Many free-born farmers tried to compete in the contracting market --sowing, planting, harvesting, taking crops to market. Because the large landowners (what we might call the corporate farmer today) worked their lands with slaves, they were able to underbid the free-born farmer. Many abandoned their farms when they became unprofitable. They swelled the ranks of the permanently unemployed in Rome. Slaves, arguably, were better off. There were, at least, employed.

That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 1

It is fashionable but flat wrong to say that Democrats are equally guilty. Trouble was in evidence even before World War I, the era of robber barons. The Great Depression resulted from a 'fever' --the idea that speculative riches were easy. It was thought that the bubble would last forever. The 'bubble' burst and a great depression ensued.

World War II put people back to work but it was also --as a result of fair, progressive taxation --the most egalitarian period in American history. As GOP policies eventually dominated following WWII, the rich were taxed less and less, and as a result, productivity fell.

Income disparities increased exponentially. In other words, the rich got rich and the poor, much, much poorer. Until Bush Jr, the most dramatic demonstration of those facts had been the administration of Ronald Reagan which doubled the Federal Bureaucracy and tripled the national deficit. Federal spending under Reagan was completely out of control; the budget ballooned. If any net wealth had been created, none of it trickled down: productivity declined, unemployment rose, job growth declined well below the Carter levels. [See: Bureau of Labor Statistics]

As recently as 2006, many blogs, newspapers and electronic media were reporting a 'global economic boom'. Bands might well have played 'The Charleston' or 'Varsity Drag', the newsreel soundtrack to heady days of fast bucks and faster women, rowdy days in which the belief that anyone could get rich was encouraged by the GOP. What was in it for them? Votes! The GOP was living in a past best remembered for the Stutz Bearcat and Racoon Coats soon to be followed by "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?". [See video below]

A scheme in which the rest of the world would keep the US afloat so that it might buy their products might have worked, for a while, but for the ruinous, the disastrous effects of the US war of aggression against Iraq. America's 'unquenchable materialistic appetite' drove the world economy. The economies of several nations, including Japan, possibly China, will collapse when the US consumer is not employed sufficiently to buy their product. When the US consumer goes belly up, so too will the nations that depend upon those billions of US dollars.

The parallels with the crash of 1929 are as valid as are analogies to Rome. US debt now tops the total debts of all the nations of the world at about 4.3 trillion dollars. Another nation might be bailed out by a bigger, richer nation. In this case, however, the entire world is not rich enough to bail out America. In 1929, the debt ratio in relation to the Gross National Product stood at a healthy 16%. In 1990, at the end of the ruinous and disastrous Reagan administration, the national debt had increased to 60% of the GDP. Insatiable America ran up a tab that is now due but there is no nation on earth capable or willing to pick up the tab. Wherever and whenever Rome 'pulled out' its legions because it could no longer support them in situ the Dark Age would begin.

The Republican Great Depression began in 1929, not 1932, and it was the direct result of 9 years of unrelenting trickle-down economics delivered under three Republican Presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) and their treasury Secretary, the anti-tax, anti-regulation corporate titan, Andrew Mellon.

Hoover came to the presidency in March 1929 after a campaign in which he insisted that a "continuation of the policies of the Republican party is fundamentally necessary to the future advancement of this progress and to the further building up of this prosperity."

When the market crashed in October 1929, the true cost of the Republicans' get-rich-today-and-don't-worry-about-tomorrow policies became all too apparent. Years of corporate deregulation, Wall Street manipulation, rampant speculation, cuts in taxation for the wealthy, and easy-credit expansion for consumers had fueled an unsustainable bubble of artificial wealth that popped with devastating effect.

But Hoover refused to acknowledge the collapse. The "fundamental business of the country," he insisted, was "on a sound and prosperous basis."

Compare those pre- and post- crash Hoover statements to these pre- and post-crash McCain statements:

He should be judged very, very well as far as the economy is concerned. We're in a long sustained period of economic growth.

- John McCain on George W. Bush, March 5, 2007

I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

- August 2008

Based on that record, there are few people in America who could more rightly claim to be the heir of Herbert Hoover than John McCain (if you're thinking Bush, you're close, but he's actually Calvin Coolidge's heir).

I blame the GOP for this debacle, specifically the incompetent and venal administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr and, most recently, that of George W. Bush, the lesser idiot.

Let's take a look at the history before it gets re-written:

Any Democratic President has presided over greater economic growth and job creation than any Republican President since World War II.

When Bush Jr took office, job creation was worst under a Republican, Bush Sr, at 0.6% per year and best under a Democrat, Johnson, at 3.8% per year.

Economic growth under President Carter was far greater than under Reagan or Bush Sr. In fact, economic growth in general was greater under Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton than under Reagan or Bush. Democrats always outperform a failed party: the GOP!

The job creation rate under Clinton was 2.4% significantly higher than Ronald Reagan's 2.1% per year.

The "top performing Presidents" by this standard, in order from best down, were Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy. The "worst" (in descending order) were Nixon, Reagan, Bush.

Half of jobs created under Reagan were in the public sector--some 2 million jobs added to the Federal Bureaucracy. Hadn't he promised to reduce that bureaucracy?

Reagan, though promising to reduce government and spending, tripled the national debt and left huge deficits to his successor. Bush Jr's record will be even worse.

By contrast, most of the jobs created on Clinton's watch were in the private sector.

Put another way: any Democratic President beats any Republican President since World War II.

Everything posted above is based upon official, government stats from the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CBO, and BEA among others. They are 'official' and irrefutable unless someone wants to make the outlandish case that the Federal Bureaucracy, the numerous agencies which keep these stats, is somehow biased. That argument is absurd in light of the fact that of those 20 years from the election of Ronald Reagan to the stolen election of 2000, Democrats had the Presidency in only eight of them.

Following are just some of the 'accomplishments' of the GOP as they come to me. With any effort at all, you will find hundreds more. The following I dashed 'off the top of my head".

Selling out the American consumer to Wal- Mart; most Americans no longer earn enough to shop anywhere else. Wal-Mart depresses local economies, has forced employees to work 'off the clock', in other words, 'work for free'. Wal-Mart has destroyed the 'downtown' areas of small towns. You can still see them. But only in Norman Rockwell prints.

Dividing the US into those who have and those who have not where those who have not make up over 90 percent of the population and those have are but a about one percent and own MORE than 90 percent combined.

The dumbing down of America with 'faith-based' initiatives'; what had been needed was fact-based initiatives that encouraged intelligence --rather than gullibility and the belief in economic voodoo. Like 'trickle down theory' and other GOP 'economic voodoo', 'faith-based inititives' was a callous fraud exemplified by the "Houston Miracle" often attributed to Bush protoge Rod Paige. It was a fraud. The test scores were phony baloney. Like Enron, they cooked the books.

The destruction of New Orleans because black folk dared to live there. Recently it has been learned that residents of the white suburb of Algiers Point murdered black residents trying to escape rising flood waters in New Orleans. As New Orleans tried to recover, Bush infamously said: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"

The subversion of American jurisprudence by packing SCOTUS with ideologues and idiots who clearly thought that it was their job to re-write the Constitution --not apply it. Clue: Antonin Scallia cannot carry James Madison's shit! Scalia had all but admitted his bias even before the debacle in Florida was taken to the high court. Scalia himself admitted that his aim was to prevent Bush from falling behind in the recount. He would try to undo the laws of common-sense and logic to do it: "Count first and rule upon the legality afterward is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance that democratic stability requires!" Excuse me, Antonin! The guy getting the fewer number of votes is SUPPOSED to lose, you idiot! Fact is, Antonin never had a stupid idea that he could not intellectualize with big words and bullshit! But --as Scallia himself opined: "I'm too smart for this court!" Of late, that may be true. And that is enough to give one night terrors.

The destruction of the US environment.

Presiding over US descent into third world, possibly fourth world status.

Turning American cities into sprawling out-of-control carbuncles the purpose of which was to inspire car sales and increased oil consumption. This is especially stupid as 'car making' was essemtially 'outsourced' to Japanese plants paying MUCH LOWER wages inside the US. Toyata was allowed to build cars in the US and pay much less than autoworkers would have made in Detroit. Workers who make less money, spend less mony --unless they are extended credit. Credit seems like FREE MONEY UNTIL THE BILL COMES DUE!

Gerrymandering congressional districts such that the GOP might get majorities in both houses of Congress.

Openly deriding the Constitution --as George W. Bush had done numerous times in various ways.

Turning American cities into ugly carbuncles in which robber baron corporations brainwash a captive audience in Potemkin villages called 'suburbs' or --worse --'planned communities' which come with an implicit guarantee that you will not see a 'negro'.

Becoming a blood-sucking parasite that killed its host.

In simpler times, goppers would have been denounced as being possessed by demons and subject to the 'trial by water'. Certainly --by defining their opposition as 'terrorist' in nature, the GOP had hoped to subject them to trial by water boarding.

Political dissent is one thing --but the outright subversion of the rule of law as institutionalized by the GOP is nothing less than high treason.

The GOP is not a political party. It's a crime syndicate and a kooky, malevolent cult.